By Keri O’Shea
It’s kind of hard not to get lost for words when you find yourself reviewing an – albeit beautifully re-released – piece of classic 80s schlock like Bride of Re-Animator. It’s one of those things where I think that if you wanted to see it, you probably will have gotten around to it at some point over the past twenty five years or so, and if you have zero interest in it, well, I don’t know if these words will change your mind. The fact stands, though, that there is a steady and committed market for what the likes of Arrow are doing – which is, providing definitive versions of films we probably encountered first on VHS, but now want to own in a form which is the complete antithesis of the modern online movie, package-free viewing experience. In that, Arrow know their market and they are without compare in what they’ve been able to do in recent years.
But what if you hadn’t gotten around to seeing this film in any of its incarnations – what would you need to know about it? I think what struck me on this particular revisit was actually how hard the film works, sometimes rather fruitlessly, to build up to its lunatic crescendo, when diehards who enjoyed Re-Animator probably would have happily taken a little less plot to get us there.
The film picks up some months after the ‘massacre’ which occurred at the hospital under the jurisdiction of one Dr Herbert West, played as deadpan as ever by Jeffrey Combs (indeed the whole film would dissolve as messily as one of Screaming Mad George’s creations, if Combs played for laughs. Rinse and repeat for any number of lowbrow horror and exploitation films.) Alongside his long-suffering sidekick, the anti-Igor Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) West has somehow dodged any dodgy implications about his involvement with the scene of the crime by getting seconded to…Peru? It seems that when the going gets tough, the tough end up in South America, stitching people back together in the midst of a civil conflict. West is astonishingly undeterred from still trying out a bit of his Re-Agent on their ‘patients’ and, well. The man is as stubborn as a mule. Every time it’s administered, the subjects get so apoplectic that they have to be offed again immediately. However, a combination of factors, not least of which is a reanimated lizard which fills West with renewed optimism (yep, you heard) sees the two men soon back on American shores, back where they left off.
And so, West is back to borrowing body parts, renewing his energies for extra-curricular activities at the house he shares with Cain, when one of the body parts – his rival Dr Hill’s head, to be exact – gets reanimated once more, aided and abetted by a curious mortician by the name of Graves (Mel Stewart), who has a go with some Re-Agent himself. As if all of this wasn’t enough of a crowd, the Police have reopened their investigation on West and Cain. There’s also a new love interest for Cain, but to be honest, she’s a bit extraneous…
So, as anyone would do in the circumstances, our housemates begin working on their magnum opus – a woman comprised out of all the good bits they could find at work, such as a ballerina’s feet, a prostitute’s legs, the head of a terminally ill woman whom Cain was treating, oh and remember Megan, Barbara Crampton’s character in the first film? West hung onto her heart for just such an occasion. The sad thing is that there is so much else going on in this film, that the reveal of their own, suitably grisly spin on the Bride of Frankenstein motif, itself feels a bit stitched on at the end. This is a shame as the female creature looks impressive, and a few ideas are almost-explored in her inclusion which don’t really go anywhere (such as whether it’s Megan, or poor Gloria who’s coming to the fore here). I know that the classic Elsa Lanchester creature is only on the screen for a few moments, given the fact that she, too, gives a film its name – but there is still a sense that the whole proceedings are driving towards her incarnation, even given some gloriously weird asides. Well, to bring us back to the more modern movie, I guess that’s what you get when you feel that you need to stitch bat’s wings to a severed head and have it fluttering around the place!
Ultimately, Bride of Re-Animator is fun, but it does drown in its jumble of different elements and this is easier to see a fair few years down the line. Yuzna hasn’t done a bad job here, although it’s far from his best work, but I do feel that just as Cain decries West’s work as “morbid doodling”, this is essentially exactly what you could say about the film as a whole. Still, completists, nostalgics and general gore fiends will (and should) be impressed at the exhaustive work which has been done by Arrow on releasing a complete print, even if this means some minor differences in quality in places. Yet again, this seems to be a definitive version of an old beloved horror film, so if you haven’t done so already, find a spot on your shelf for it.
Bride of Re-Animator is available to purchase now from Arrow Video.